Archive | Europe and Central Asia RSS feed for this section

Romania: Code of Conduct for Romanian MPs

8 November 2012 in Accountability, Europe and Central Asia, Politics and government

Romania has recently been hit with a series of corruption scandals which have gravely affected the parliament’s image. In September 2012 Transparency International Romania (TI-Ro) with the help of two other NGOs specialized in the field, Pro Democratia and Centre for Legal Resources put forward a proposal for a Code of Conduct in the agenda […]

Read full story Comments { 1 }

Voting in Ukraine – The people lose in elections that were hardly free and fair

1 November 2012 in Accountability, Europe and Central Asia, Politics and government

The elections here did not go well. Even the enormous expenses of installing cameras at polling stations didn’t provide transparent voting. Constant problems with connections, lack of experience in using of such systems and the rush in preparation for the elections turned the idea into a new kind of entertainment. Not surprisingly, the independent election […]

Read full story Comments { 0 }

Italy corruption vote: new law, new start?

30 October 2012 in Europe and Central Asia, Politics and government

Update: Italian deputies voted 481 to 19 in favour of the law on Wednesday 31 October. Read Transparency International Italy’s press release here. Tomorrow, Italy’s Chamber of Deputies will finally vote on a new anti-corruption law, following a debate tonight. The bill was already approved by the Senate on 18 October369. While no panacea for […]

Read full story Comments { 3 }

Will Berlusconi sentence stick?

26 October 2012 in Europe and Central Asia, Impunity

Exceptionally high numbers of cases are being dismissed in Italy: from 2005-2009, 10 to 13 per cent of all criminal court proceedings have been closed because they ran out of time, meaning that one in 10 trials ended with impunity for the alleged offender. That is more than 150 000 cases a year. In Hungary, the rate was less than one per cent. In Finland, it was less than 0.1 per cent.

Read full story Comments { 2 }

No Impunity: Armenian politicians duck justice

26 October 2012 in Europe and Central Asia, Politics and government

It is nothing new for Armenians to see their politicians accused of corruption. Usually the accusations have little effect and in a few instances people may change jobs but they rarely get punished. In July 2012, however, a court in the United States returned a guilty verdict against Vardan Ayvazyan, a former environment minister and […]

Read full story Comments { 6 }

Georgian elections: international monitors help defuse tension

24 October 2012 in Europe and Central Asia, Politics and government

By the early hours of October 2, polling stations had closed and the Georgian parliamentary elections appeared to have passed without any major violations. Official ballot counts were nearly complete when one of our observers reported that armed special forces had stormed several polling stations in the west of the country, demanded that observers leave […]

Read full story Comments { 4 }

Prison Abuse Protests: Georgia’s Abu Ghraib

26 September 2012 in Europe and Central Asia, People power, Politics and government, Whistleblowing

On September 18 Georgian opposition television stations warned their evening audiences that they were about to broadcast disturbing images of abuse by wardens at Gldani prison Nr. 8 in Tbilisi, Georgia’s capital city. Many viewers were nevertheless unprepared for what they saw next. One video contained graphic images of prison inmates being sodomized by guards […]

Read full story Comments { 3 }

TI Portugal Summer School: A lesson on integrity

25 September 2012 in Europe and Central Asia, Measurement and Research, People power, Politics and government, Private sector

You might have seen Portugal on the news recently. Just over a week ago, an estimated million people (in a country of roughly 10 million) took to the streets protesting new austerity measures announced by Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho. Talk of instability in the governing coalition amid increased public anger damaged the country’s reputation […]

Read full story Comments { 2 }

Financial Times joins chorus for more transparency at the ECB

25 September 2012 in Europe and Central Asia, European Union

We at TI-EU have been questioning the levels of transparency and accountability at the ECB, as you can see in our op-ed in the EU Observer and our blog post on President Barroso’s address . We are glad to see that those wise old heads at the Financial Times (motto: “without fear or favour”) came to the same conclusion. They, like […]

Read full story Comments { 0 }

Bribery in Hungary: A Close Encounter of the Third Kind

21 September 2012 in Accountability, Anti-corruption Conventions, Defence and Security, Europe and Central Asia, Private sector

‘All countries share a responsibility to combat bribery’, according to the OECD anti-bribery convention. But a bribery case in Hungary that has seen action in several other countries, but not Hungary itself, is testing that principle. There is no obstacle stopping British or Swedish law enforcers who investigated the sale of fighter jets to Hungary […]

Read full story Comments { 3 }
← Older posts Newer posts →